House Licensing and Administrative Procedures Chairman Wayne Smith certainly isn't considered to be one of the class clowns in the House, but when he leaped into the air during debate on a bill to remove actually dead voters from the rolls - instead of live ones the govt thought were dead - it made an impression.

"Dead men can't jump," said Smith, who said he was surprised to receive notice from the state that he was dead and therefore being removed from the rolls.

On Friday, the House the legislation by Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, and Senate sponsor Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, to the governor.

The bill aimed to prevent a replay of a voter roll purge last year that targeted thousands of living Texans who were mistakenly presumed dead. The bill passed in time to enact new safeguards before voters’ names can be removed from local rolls.

The measure would require the secretary of state to come up with more accurate “matching” criteria for comparing voter registrations with death records to ensure no Texans are improperly removed from voter rolls. Uniform standards and procedures would have to be followed.

In addition, counties would have to confirm a death with another document besides a death certificate – such as an obituary – and then send a standardized letter to the voter’s address, giving him 60 days to affirm he is still alive. (The House version had 30 days.)

The legislation comes after the secretary of state’s office removed dead or “potentially deceased” Texans from local voter rolls last year.

County election officials sent out about 80,000 notices to voters who were told to provide evidence they were alive within 30 days or have their names struck from the rolls. A 2011 law passed by the Legislature required the secretary of state to use data from the Social Security Administration to evaluate voter rolls.

Thousands of living Texans receive the notification because of flawed verification procedures. Some were put on the deceased list simply because they had the same last name and last four social security digits as a deceased person.

(Most of this post was written by Terry Stutz. I would have linked it but I CAN'T FIND IT ONLINE.)